Arabidopsis Plant Care

Erin was in charge of planting and tending to the Arabidopsis plants, which were used for floral dips and protoplast formation. She planted a new batch of Arabidopsis seeds every two weeks; this staggered growth ensured that different growth stages of the plant were present, allowing for longer construction time of the pCAMBIA/Cas9 plasmid. The plants were too eager to grow in several cases, so their primary shoots had to be trimmed to delay growth – this gave the team an extra ~7 days for construction and preparation of the transformed Agrobacterium cells. After the floral dip, the transgenic seeds were harvested and planted. However, as plants have extensive growth periods, it will take another month until they are ready for viral exposure.